


And Yet Not Dead

by labeautelivresque



Category: Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
Genre: Canon character death (Cathy), Drabble, F/M, Love/Hate, POV Second Person, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 04:12:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17615246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labeautelivresque/pseuds/labeautelivresque
Summary: “How did she die?” You know how it should have happened. It should have been decades from now, & you should have gone together into the beyond, whatever awaits there. It would have been yet another adventure for you two to brave.Heathcliff's famous monologue from his POV.





	And Yet Not Dead

**Author's Note:**

> You can like/reblog on Tumblr [here](http://showmeahero.tumblr.com/post/179571372944/drabble-heathcliffs-monologue-after-cathy-dies). Comments/kudos are much appreciated, as always! Thanks!

**YOU DID NOT NEED TO HEAR THE MESSENGER RIDING TO GIMMERTON, N** **OR SEE THE FLICKERING OF THE LIGHTS IN THE WINDOWS OF THE GRANGE TO KNOW THAT SHE IS DEAD.** her soul  **&  **yours were one. when she drew her last breath, you felt something in you – your one last,  _ **measly**_  thread to humanity – perish with her. it is a strange kind of hollowness, being this walking corpse. such  _emptiness_ ,  **&** yet you feel utterly weighed down by despair  **&  **rage  **&  **hatred.

          you are no stranger to hatred.  ** _(_ you hate her, too, even as you love her.**  _ **)**  _if you had the power to bring her back, to conjure her here before you, you might  _ **kill**_  her again.  **&  **shouldn’t you have that right? shouldn’t you be allowed to commit the murder of which she has accused you? that silly, stupid,  _selfish_ child who tossed aside her own happiness so frivolously… you  _ **HATE**  _her. she has done this to herself  **&  **had the nerve to lay the weapon at your feet. you hate her,  **&  **you hate nelly, too. how dare she come to you  **&  **try to speak comfort, when she knows there is none to give? 

** & **yet you cannot stop the childish question breaking free from your lips: “how did she die?” you know how it  _should_ have happened. it should have been decades from now,  **&  **you should have gone  _ **together**_  into the beyond, whatever awaits there. it would have been yet another adventure for you two to brave. you hate her, you hate her, you love her, you love her, you–

          “quietly as a lamb!” says nelly. “she drew a sigh,  **&  **stretched herself, like a child reviving,  **&**  sinking again to sleep;  **&  **five minutes after I felt one little pulse at her heart,  **&**  nothing more!”  


          “ **&  **did she ever mention me?” you think again of her cruel words this morning  **&  **cannot bear, suddenly, the thought that she had died  **HATING** you.  


          “her senses never returned: she recognized nobody from the time you left her. she lies with a sweet smile on her face;  **&**  her latest ideas wandered back to pleasant early days. her life closed in a gentle dream—may she wake as kindly in the other world!”  


_a dream_ , she says.  _a dream_. how like cathy, you think scathingly, to leave you so  _ **peacefully**_. to tear your life to shreds, to crush your heart to ashes,  **&  **to think nothing of it! to forget, at the end, all but her sweet, childhood fancies. 

** & **the  _ **FURY**_  erupts out of you with a curse that would shock poor, dead mr. earnshaw, who had loved you so dearly  **&  **thought so well of you. “may she wake in torment!” nelly’s face is drawn with horror,  **&  **you almost laugh to see it. does she know you so little that she had not expected such a reaction? has she been so willfully blind? 

          “why, she’s a  **LIAR** to the end! where is she? not  _there –_ not in heaven – not perished – where?  _oh!_ you said you cared nothing for my sufferings!  **&  **i pray one prayer – i repeat it till my tongue stiffens – catherine earnshaw, may you not rest as long as i am living” –  **here, a gasp from nelly**  – “you said i killed you –  _ **haunt me**_ , then!”

          here it is: the terrible truth that you cannot deny. you are alone in this cruel world, as you have always been. she has been the only constancy,  **&  **even she was at times inconstant. but your soul is her soul, even now that it has left her body. in equal measure, you love  **&  **hate her, as you love  **&  **hate yourself. no man, in his entire life, could love her more than you love her in a single  _moment_. you  _ **are**  _catherine earnshaw. you cannot exist without her. 

           **&  **yet, you must. you must.  **&  **the tears come now, hard  **&** fast. you are a wounded animal; it is as though you have been run through with knives, impaled with bullets. no, no… not even  _ **that**_  can touch the degree of pain in which you find yourself. you have died  **&  **yet you are not dead.

          “the murdered  _do_  haunt their murderers, i believe. i know that ghosts  _have_ wandered on earth. be with me always – take any form –  _ **drive me mad**_! only do not leave me in this abyss, where i cannot find you!  **OH, GOD!** it is unutterable! i  _cannot_  live without my life! i  _cannot_  live without my soul!”


End file.
